State can keep probing ban on gay unions at Ocean Grove

A federal judge has granted New Jersey authority to continue investigating whether a Methodist group in Ocean Grove violated the rights of two lesbian couples when it refused to rent them its boardwalk pavilion for their civil union ceremonies.

U.S. District Court Judge Joel Pisano dismissed a lawsuit which was filed by the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association as a preemptive strike against the state investigation. The association claimed civil unions conflict with Methodist doctrine and that the church's constitutional rights would be violated if authorities forced it to allow them at the pavilion, an open-sided structure sometimes used for religious worship.

Pisano said the Methodist group can raise that claim in proceedings before the state Division of Civil Rights, which has received complaints from two lesbian couples whose attempts to rent the pavilion for civil unions were rejected.

Pisano ruled it would be improper for a federal court to block the division from investigating the lesbian couples' complaints. He agreed with arguments raised by J. Frank Vespa-Papaleo, the state director of civil rights, that "it is unquestionable that New Jersey has an important interest in preventing discrimination in places of public accommodation."

The Camp Meeting Association owns all the land in Ocean Grove, a nearly one-square-mile section of Neptune Township originally founded as a seaside religious retreat. Its homeowners lease their land from the group.

The association had regularly rented out the pavilion for weddings; its administrator said it stopped that practice as of April 1. The law legalizing civil unions and banning discrimination against persons forming them took effect Feb. 19.